Manteca schools doing well 5 months after reopening.
“I’m glad we got to go back. I’m grateful every day I’m at school.”
As the bell rang, hundreds of students poured out of classrooms and crossed the large quad at Sierra High in the Central Valley town of Manteca, heading to their next class.
District Superintendent Steven Burke watched as the students — almost universally masked — moved across the campus during their 10minute passing period, extended to give teachers time to sanitize student work areas.
Back in classes, a sense of normalcy was palpable — students laughing or sneaking glances at cell phones, huddled in small groups over chemistry experiments, their teachers raising their voices over chatter to assign homework before the bell rang.
Since November, thousands of K12 students in Manteca — a diverse, lowincome district — have been back on campus at least two days a week. Students at Sierra are spending full days in biology, algebra, ceramics, social studies, Spanish class or an agricultural biology course, which includes
taking care of a half dozen small turkeys housed in a classroom.
“This is what we’re here for,” Burke said. “It takes all senses to learn. There’s a reason to have schools.”
Across the Bay Area, many public schools, including those in San
Francisco and Oakland, are months behind Manteca, reopening in recent days, with no plans to bring back most middle and high school students before the fall.
Schools across the region have remained shuttered even as poli
ticians, health experts and many families have urged a return to inperson learning. California state law also speaks to it, saying as of June that districts “shall offer inperson instruction to the greatest extent possible.”
Oakland only recently reopened to the youngest students and San Francisco will follow with a similar phasein of elementary and highneeds students starting Monday. Both districts have struggled to line up enough teachers to reopen.
While many local districts have been mired in labor negotiations, politics and vitriolic community debates over how, when or even if to reopen this school year, Manteca figured it out.
“It’s taken a lot of courage on a lot of people’s part,” said Sierra Principal Steve Clark. “It was meticulously planned.”
That planning started almost immediately after schools shut down in March 2020, with district officials coordinating crisis learning in the spring while also starting to create a comprehensive reopening plan in what Superintendent Clark Burke, a former Army officer, called his war room.
Keeping classrooms closed to the 25,000 students in Manteca Unified wasn’t an option, Burke said.
The city, not far past the eastern edge of the Bay Area, is not a wealthy or particularly privileged community. The district is predominantly Hispanic/Latino and 60% of students qualify for free or reduced school lunch. About a quarter are English learners.
Sierra High, with just over 1,400 students, generally mirrors the district’s demographics and is a Title I school, meaning it has a disproportionate share of lowincome families.
In other words, reopening has been less about money and more about listening to experts and overcoming obstacles based on a belief that reopening was an essential part of public education.
In the quad, the superintendent watched straggling students hurrying to class.
Emma Foxworth, 16, was already in her seat in choir class. While group singing has been considered one of the riskiest activities in the pandemic, state guidelines now allow singing outside with masks on, socially distanced, for up to 30 minutes.
Choir and all other classes were not the same from home, the sophomore said. The months of distance learning in the spring and early fall felt like a missed year of schooling.
“It felt like I was playing a schoolthemed video game,” she said, “I would rather be hybrid.”
Her classmate, senior Katelynn Morales, agreed.
“I’m glad we got to go back,” she said. “I’m grateful every day I’m at school.”
In September, the district reached an agreement for a phased reopening with the teachers’ union, one that generally followed state and county health guidelines. As is the case in many districts, the reopening process wasn’t without conflict and tension in Manteca, with union leaders and many teachers questioning whether it was safe enough to return.
The district upgraded HVAC filters and ordered more than 1,000 highend air scrubbers at about $1,200 apiece, one for every classroom and two for larger spaces like cafeterias and libraries. The units arrived in January and February.
In the fall, Sierra administrators also met individually with teachers, who were already providing distance learning from their classrooms, to address concerns about the return of 1,400 students, said Assistant Principal Anthony Chapman.
Some wanted additional protective gear or a particular classroom layout to increase distancing.
The district started the year online then moved by November to a hybrid inperson schedule, offering families wanting to remain in distance learning the option of an online academy. Some teachers transferred to the distance learning program, while others took an early retirement offer or went on unpaid leave, district officials said.
Teachers were not yet vaccinated when inperson resumed and there was no districtrequired regular coronavirus testing program. Instead, students and staff were encouraged to seek testing when exposed or when symptomatic.
There have been dozens of cases of coronavirus over the past year, although very few transmitted at schools.
Any positive case sends the person into quarantine, with case tracking determining whether others need to stay home for 10 days as well. At times, entire classrooms have been quarantined, but not since January, Clark said.
The district’s hybrid model split students into two groups, with each on campus two days a week. Teachers instruct the students at home and those in the classroom at the same time. Some use their laptop and stay at their desk, while others move around, a motion-detecting camera following them.
Chemistry teacher Tyler Ryan, now in his fourth year at the school, watched his inperson students conduct experiments to determine the atomic mass of a substance, while their online peers watched via a laptop camera from home, knowing they would finish the experiment in class the next day when they swapped positions.
He said the return to inperson instruction was “kinda tough.”
“You just do the best with what you can,” he said. “My motto is make it work and we’ve been making it work.”
Interactive classes like music, physical education and singing were among the biggest challenges, administrators said, given the risks related to the pandemic.
But on a recent day after lunch, the school band started to warm up under a covered outdoor area, the notes from the tuba drifting across the quad. Each musician had a special mask made for their particular instrument, covering their nose and mouth even as they played.
Clark paused as he walked across the campus, listening to a song the band would play at the Friday football game, the first that a limited number of students would be allowed to attend.
The song floated across the campus.
“We’ll never take that for granted again,” he said. “It brings tears to your eyes.”
Clark doesn’t want to make it sound like any of the reopening process was easy. It wasn’t.
It required constant adapting and adjusting, trusting evolving health guidelines and making necessary changes. He noted, however, that no other districts have asked to visit, to see how they did it.
With case rates improving, Manteca will exit the hybrid model April 26, allowing all students back four days a week with reduced social distancing.
Teacher Amy Bohlken’s class, she and the six turkeys growing up in her classroom, will be ready for all of them.
“It’s good to see the kids,” Bohlken said, adding the students need each other and the inperson time in class. “We’re very fortunate to have them back so the kids will have this experience. It’s just kind of a unique year.”